


I Never Sharpened My Teeth

by DrDiabolical



Category: Naruto
Genre: Animal Traits, BAMF Hatake Kakashi, BAMF on a Leash, Captivity, Collars, Dark, Dehumanization, Dogteeth Hatake Kakashi, Gen, Hatake Kakashi Whump, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Human Experimentation, Kid Hatake Kakashi, Kirigakure | Hidden Mist Village, Light World Building, Minato is nice in this one, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not A Fix-It, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Hatake Kakashi, Psychological Torture, Time Travel, Young Hatake Kakashi, he tries his best but everything goes wrong for him, in a more literal sense this time, shock collar, specifically kirigakure world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:34:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26920705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrDiabolical/pseuds/DrDiabolical
Summary: Kakashi wakes up on the day of his father's fateful mission and intercepts it the only way he knows how: by killing the instigators.Six-years-old and tapped in the T&I Department of the Kekkei Genkai Obsessed Bloody Mist, he knows what he must do to prevent the fourth shinobi war but finds himself without the means necessary to do so.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Momochi Zabuza
Comments: 35
Kudos: 191





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 10k words for this today and just wanted to throw out the prologue before I exploded. Heavily inspired by the Whumptober 2020 prompt list, consider yourself warned. 
> 
> Alt Title: Can't Kill the Creature That You Created (from the song Beast by 8 Graves, the song suits this fic very well)  
> Current Title comes from the song Грустная Сука by IC3PEAK, which literally translates to Sad Bitch and the lines goes as follows: I never sharpened my teeth, I was born with these fangs. 
> 
> Song Links: [Beast Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/6xVUTaatzohxhC7L2tDOCj?si=Q-UmWAaeQx6gDMHhgd8RjA) [Beast Youtube](https://youtu.be/doKha3DtzyY) [Грустная Сука Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/18hIrODUziu3KyUxeDKlcq?si=BGl6My9zTliPHmy-P3Mtbg) [Грустная Сука Youtube](https://youtu.be/zf99kdFw9b8)
> 
> Note: He's not very BAMF in this first part. He's severely disorientated.

Consciousness did not return to him slowly. It was a quick and panicked thing, slipping into his system and shocking his nerves alive, firing shots across his synapses, and flaring his chakra. Breath funnelled through his throat and lungs like the impact a waterfall made on the pool below it, crashing against the surface and striking underneath, the rapid intake of oxygen squeezing his lungs and hurting him more than it helped. 

“He’s hyperventilating,” a voice said and he tried to lock onto the sound to no avail, he couldn’t see anything and his hearing was muffled. His body tried to thrash reflexively at whatever was suffocating him, the knowledge that it was his own inability to regulate his breath meaning nothing to his nervous system. Panic thrummed through him as he failed to identify the threat and then failed to understand why he was having such a severe overreaction to waking up in an unfamiliar place. He was a shinobi, he’d been in situations like this before. 

He had training but none of it was kicking in. 

Flaring his chakra intentionally to manually override his malfunctioning reflexes, he gasped as his control vanished in the face of an all-encompassing block. Without a means to wrestle his control back over his rationale, his heart sped up threefold, and his tenuous grip on reality slipped away.  
  
  
  
  
  
Time passed, he was certain of it, although he was not aware of the specifics of its passing, only that it had. For what good it did when his first impression upon his captors was already ruined and dripping with weakness, his second waking adhered to his interrogative training. Something must have happened for him to react so rashly but the memories before he was put under escaped him. 

He knew it was wartime. But in a war between the moon and the combined might of the entire continent, there were generally no prisoners. So he was not a POW, which left a limited number of possibilities in its exclusion. ‘Hospital’ was the first scenario to come to mind but he didn’t feel heavily injured and a stay in a medic’s tent wouldn’t require chakra suppressing seals. Unless that was the reason why he was being treated, which aligned with his lack of notable injuries. 

Although, his body did hurt. The aches were what woke him up, a mixture of repercussions from chakra exhaustion and something else as of yet unidentified. 

He was sat up, oddly enough, his proprioception returning to him. Not sat up in the sense he was propped up on the small incline hospital beds allowed but rather he was sat on a chair and held ram-rod straight against the backrest. The strappings holding down his limbs, body, neck and forehead against whatever he was sat on were probably partially responsible for the majority of his aches accounting for however long he had been restrained for. 

The set up did not bode well for his hospital theory and gave credence to his previously dismissed ‘prisoner of war’ assumption. 

“He’s awake,” someone ahead of him said and he mentally cursed at the futility of his efforts to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t. Whoever had captured him had to have been monitoring his vitals, one point to the hospital theory. 

He redacted all points from the hospital theory and sent it down in a blazing trail to the negatives when his captor removed his blindfold and his eyes adjusted to the clinical lighting. 

Although it occasionally went by different names, Torture and Interrogation was not an institute unique to Konoha. Fortunately, the only T&I Kakashi was familiar with was Konoha’s but it didn’t take much to connect his predicament to the severe Kiri-nin in front of him and come to a daunting conclusion.

“It’s okay, buddy,” the man said and leaned forwards, hands planted on his thighs. His tone threw off Kakashi, it didn’t match with his scarred face and gruff expression. He spoke as though he were addressing a child which was not an interrogation tactic that Konoha shinobi were taught. Perhaps they should implement it since it certainly worked to offset his rhythm. “If you do as you're told and answer our questions, we won’t have to hurt you too badly.”

Or maybe not. It wasn’t instilling fear within him, if anything it was mildly irritating and mostly bizarre. It didn’t help his mounting confusion as he tried desperately to understand how he could possibly be in a situation like this in the middle of the fourth great shinobi war. The man wasn’t wearing a shinobi alliance headband and it didn’t make sense for Kakashi, a well known front liner, to be locked up in a foreign village’s T&I chamber miles away from the action. Hell, Kakashi didn’t know who this man was but they needed all the help they could get on the battlefield, he should be there too. 

“Why are-” Kakashi stopped before his next words had a chance to leave his mouth. That wasn’t his voice. It was too high and young. “Ah,” he tested it, hoping against hope that he hadn’t heard himself correctly. He had. “What.”

“All brawn and no brain, huh?” The kiri-nin chuckled and withdrew to his full height. Either he was unnaturally tall or Kakashi’s chair was very short because the man’s eye-level was far too high above Kakashi’s head. Neither, he noted numbly as he looked down and saw that his feet didn’t touch the ground. 

“What happened?” He asked, sounding meek and vulnerable and everything he shouldn’t be in a position of weakness like this. His tiny fingers cinched the wooden armrests his palms were strapped flush against, armrests that extended a good length passed the tips of his fingers. No explanations came to him, his mind distressingly blank as his earlier panic reared its head at the implausibility of his current reality. “Is this a genjutsu?”

“Aww, poor thing, is that what they tell you about T&I in Konoha? That they’ll give you nightmares with those red eyes? I’m sure those stories gave you nightmares, anyway,” the shinobi chuckled again and patted Kakashi’s head, heavy enough that his neck would have bowed under the weight if it weren’t being held up by the chair. “No, you’re not in a genjutsu, we just had to take precautions after what you did to our recon team. It wasn’t very nice of you, you know, to kill almost all of them like that. Is that how they raise their kids in Konoha? We may be the Bloody Mist but I’ve never seen a six-year-old so vicious before.”

What? This body - it was six years old. He was in the body of a six-year-old, in the depths of Kiri T&I because whoever had inhabited this body before him had been a bloodthirsty killer of nin. Six. A six-year-old killer of adult nin. 

“I suppose the rumours are true after all, they always did say the Hatake were a feral clan, like wolves, right?” the kiri-nin didn’t wait for an answer and carried on, “although, you’re more of a puppy, really, and I’ve heard puppies are quick to learn to do as they’re told when given a spray.”

This was more in line with interrogation tactics that Kakashi was familiar with. Reach into the captive’s history, family, techniques, missions, anything and turn what you find around so the sharp edge of the sword points towards them instead of the handle. Kakashi was the last of the Hatake line and most of the folklore surrounding his clan had faded into the memories of elders by the time he was making a name for himself. 

… Kakashi was the last of the Hatake line. This body couldn’t belong to a Hatake.

Was… was Orochimaru involved in this somehow?

“First question, then, just something basic that we already know to confirm a few things, can you give me your name, age, village and rank?” The shinobi dragged a chair from somewhere outside of Kakashi’s view and settled down in front of him. “Easy, right? Go ahead, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

He had everything to fear. He didn’t have the right answers to give the man, they wouldn’t match up with whatever they had in their files. Whatever details described this body didn’t apply to him and the contents of its previous character were unknown. 

“... Kakashi Hatake,” he said slowly. The shinobi nodded. “... Six,” he continued and the shinobi nodded again. “Konoha and…” he’d been promoted at six, it was anyone’s guess if he was a genin or a chuunin. “Genin.”

He flinched as something cold and unpleasant slapped his face and saturated his mask. Blinking moisture out of his eyes, he identified the source of the attack, a spray bottle in the shinobi’s hand. “Ah-ah,” the man tutted and set the bottle aside, “wrong answer.”

“... Chuunin,” he corrected and the man clapped in approval. Like he was a six-year-old chuunin. Like he wasn’t a twenty-nine-year-old front line fighter. Like he wasn’t at war. 

“Good boy, now let’s move onto the less fun stuff, okay?” The shinobi’s smile took on a shark-like quality and his posture tensed with barely restrained aggression, yet his voice remained sickly sweet, “why did you murder three members of a Kirigakure recon team and severely injure a further four? Tensions are high right now, if I weren’t mistaken, this very well could be an act of war,” he flicked Kakashi’s forehead protector and the resounding clink echoed in the barren room. 

Flashes of a fight, his last waking moments, converged over his vision of the present. His hand through a heart. Lightning crackling in his veins. Blood sluicing down his arms. “It wasn’t on orders,” he blurted out in a rush, “I did that for myself.”

He woke up in bed, cosy. Fell out of it. Crashed into the kitchen. Saw the date on the calendar. Rushed outside of Konoha’s walls. Intercepted a mission the only way he knew how on a time limit. Killed the instigators. 

“No one asked me to do it!” He proclaimed, desperate. If Hatake Kakashi was labelled the cause of the third shinobi war, his maddened rush of a plan would have been all for nothing. The blame would still lie with Sakumo, the one who had raised him. “I did it for me.”

He flinched at another flash of cold and the shinobi chuckled. “Oh, I’m sorry dear, your reactions are just,” he ruffled Kakashi’s hair, “nevermind, let’s try that again shall we?”

Kakashi had slipped out of many tight situations in his life, sometimes only by the skin of his teeth. 

He wasn't sure how to get out of this one.


	2. I Can See the Mountains, It's Almost Like I Can Touch Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi learns more about the purposes of his captivity and makes a break for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was initially going to remove the medical exam scene and have him just mention that it happened but I didn't want to rewrite it. I could have released this chapter a lot sooner if I had realised this earlier. 
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments and kudos, I keep them in my thoughts as I write :)
> 
> I peppered some mild humour in this chapter, trying to encapsulate the light-hearted side of Kakashi's character when under duress.

Kekkei genkai were simultaneously feared and coveted in the Land of Water. Kakashi had known this in a disconnected peripheral sense which came into focus briefly during his encounter with Zabuza and then fell out of focus again. It was a point of culture that was converse to Konoha where kekkei genkai were infused within the very foundations of the village. Clans were proud, sure, but that reverence didn’t tend to extend too far outside of clan borders. 

Strapped down to a gurney while a pair of researchers poked and prodded and _took samples of him_ for analysis, it couldn’t have been clearer that their respective villages held kekkei genkai in very different regards. 

Kakashi didn’t have a kekkei genkai presently. He had a natural affinity for lightning and a backlog of copied jutsu catalogued by an eye he no longer possessed. What he did have were biological quirks, but in no way did they give him access to any special chakra capabilities or nature affinities other than his ability to tell what a person had for breakfast by their breath from a metre away, hear the whisperings of gossip while seemingly engrossed in a book, and leave his hypothetical one night stands looking as though they were mauled by dogs rather than ridden with love bites.

Uncomfortable didn’t begin to describe his current situation. Examining every inch of him, producing scan after scan with unrecognisable medical jutsu, taking his blood, skin, hair, and _his body in general_ , in small doses, these researchers were almost rabid in their pursuit of a fictionalised kekkei genkai. Behind their medical masks, he could imagine them salivating at the prospect of confirming their biases. Or perhaps they were tearing up in desperation behind their goggles, their superiors demanding that they discover the Hatake secrets and despairing at the thought of having to report that the six-year-old they apprehended just had weird teeth and that was about all there was to it. 

Weird teeth which almost crushed the fingers of the first hand to investigate his mouth, only the chemicals slogging through his system prevented him from snapping onto his target in time. They’d sent for something to ‘deal with that’ since, Kakashi hadn’t caught the finer details, but they hadn’t returned yet-

The door opened and a shinobi swiftly deposited something onto the medical trolley on Kakashi’s right and left within the span of a few seconds. Curse the world, curse the Gods, curse Yaguya, Madara and a whole litany of rotten names, what can go wrong will go wrong and everything always went wrong for Kakashi. It was bad enough that they’d taken his mask, he didn’t need whatever the fuck that thing was. 

Rubber props were set into his mouth by one pair of gloved hands while another forced his jaw into submission as he did his damned best to snap and growl. Echos of a righteous ache yet to come pulled at his mouth as the props stretched his lips apart and ensured that he wouldn’t be severing any limbs in the immediate future. 

Dentist appointments were already on the list of things he never showed up to, never made in the first place, and whatever wicked form of the practice this was was far worse than the distant memories of his dad dragging him to the dentistry office for his six-month check-ups. 

It would have been nice if the researchers deigned to subdue him with more than mild anaesthesia, would have been lovely if they just knocked him out. Whatever ideas of torture and specialised schemes the T&I department were cooking up couldn’t compare to what they had already put him through, something which he had no doubt they were unaware of. 

Six-year-old Kakashi had yet to establish the hospital-self-defenestration facet of his reputation. 

Six-year-old Kakashi hadn’t established much of a reputation at all outside of his quick ascension to the rank of chuunin and preference for his own company. 

Except, no, that wasn’t true for this version of Kakashi. This version of Kakashi had murdered a cell of foreign nin and potentially incited the beginning of the third shinobi war. There were many things Kakashi would have traded for the horrible names that had haunted his childhood the first time around, but very few could compare to this.

“Increase the dosage.”

Wait, no, he changed his mind - better the enemy you know, his only asset right now was his intelligence… gathering, he couldn’t… he couldn’t… he... 

Damn it.

* * *

Minutes, hours, any stretch of time later, he woke up alone and cold. Points of pressure flicked at his pain receptors almost playfully and he let himself take a moment to do nothing and think on nothing. Swiping his tongue along his gums, he tasted the twang of iron. 

He rolled his wrist once, twice, and then in the other direction. A doctor had told him he had loose joints, once. Double-jointed, evidenced by the way he could dislocate his shoulder and shove the bone back into its socket with unnatural ease. Joint hypermobility syndrome, that was the medical term. Building muscle and maintaining fitness was the only advice the doctor could give him and he’d scoffed, all of four years old, and said he was going to be a ninja, that was already the plan. 

Do not perform high impact exercise. Hah. He’d scoffed at that too. 

More than once he had slipped his hands from a pair of cuffs. Young with tiny little spindly hands, it was all the more easier to crunch and pop and slip and pop again. One thumb, two thumbs. Back in they went. 

The pain was not negligible. But he did not care for it. 

The adult cuffs, hastily welded to a small but still ineffective size, didn’t clatter on the concrete ground in a series of dull thuds because he caught them before the noise could alert anyone. Carefully, he set them aside and moved onto the next phase of the plan. 

It wasn’t so much of a plan as it was a vague idea of a series of events that may or may not occur, the majority of it hinging on his reflexes and adaptability. Choices he would have to make given a split second for deliberation, and a prayer he made the right decision.

Hospital gowns didn’t make for good shinobi attire, the creasing of the fabric was obnoxiously loud and counterintuitive for stealth. Fortunately, Kakashi’s history was littered with self-appointed stealth missions paved by vinyl and stinking of peroxide disinfectant. His current mission wasn’t quite the same, still clean to a clinical standard and echoing with loss of life and injury, but the setting was familiar in all the ways it should and shouldn’t be while maintaining that this was not a place of healing, this was a place of harm.

The door was sealed, of course. But Kakashi had spent years under the tutelage of a seal master, the man who was the second-best thing in the passing of Uzushio and trained under the only other seal master of note before him. Kakashi was not naive enough to think that Minato and Jiraiya were the absolute pinnacles of accomplished shinobi in the art given the vast libraries of medical ninjutsu packed to the brim with thick heavy tomes with characters so small they were hard to discern yet had the power to bring a ninja back from the brink of death. They were damn good at what they did, but he knew their fame wouldn't have reached the same levels had they not utilised their knowledge for combat. 

Medic nin were often set aside in history, weren’t they? The Gods knew how many times Kakashi had brushed off Rin’s attempts to heal him. Perhaps they had marked these slights along with all the monumental fucks ups Kakashi had committed and were exacting their righteous due upon him now. The spirit world was said to be neither paradise nor hell. Sometimes Kakashi wondered about that.

Overloading seals led to results that had a margin of unpredictability, but one could reasonably expect for them to explode. Loud booming signals indicating his location and activities were precisely what Kakashi didn’t want during an escape operation. Removing a seal from its anchor would lead to similar results. Fortunately, he knew a workaround. 

There were several seals at play all anchored to the door, which was telling. Whoever had applied them must have learnt from study, not application, and certainly without a tutor worth any merit in the practical field. Seals with single anchors were infinitely easier to remove than seals with multiple anchors, especially in the case of multiple seals conjoined to the same point. It was a convenient placement and required less hassle in setting up. But a master like his sensei would always advise against the practise, just as Kushina had advised - she was, after all, the one versed in the trade’s roots. 

However, it did also mean that he would have to disable _all_ of them since ripping up the anchor point would be very, very loud. Otherwise, he would have left, say, the unidirectional sound barrier and what he would like to aptly name the ‘temperature leech’ and the ‘heat vomit’ - a matrix of two cleverly combined seals that sealed and unsealed heat from the room in correspondence to a negative feedback loop in which the assigned equilibrium was criminally low. If hot, leech the hot; if cold, vomit the hot back out.

Altering seals in a way that would maintain their integrity (and consequently avoid the big bad boom bang) while also cancelling out their functions so they were inert was simple enough if one knew what they were looking at. He just had to find a command in the seal that he could loop back to itself so the seal went no further. He also had to make sure not to create an infinite loop on certain functions such as the symbols that diverted chakra or, for a specific example, the part of the ‘heat vomit’ that stored heat so capacities weren’t flooded meaning everything still exploded an indeterminate amount of time later. Not good. 

There was an exception but he had practice with this scenario. The chakra suppression seals would have to be overloaded and it would _hurt_ but he knew how to mitigate the damages.

Blood made an alright ink substitute on a budget, his budget being in the negatives given all the damage repairs to the delicate fabric of the relations between shinobi villages he’d necessitated within hours of waking in his six-year-old body… so blood was the perfect choice for the few flicks and alterations he proceeded to draw with his thumb. Simple stuff. He couldn’t invent seals like sensei and it would take him a long time to make anything more complex than a single element storage scroll without a blueprint, but he could profit off of other people’s hard work if he wanted to. 

With a couple of bloody flicks, he gave a concise demonstration of the extent of his knowledge on fuinjutsu. 

Digging his pinky into the anchor point, he broke his nail in tandem with the anchor but, hey, his nail would grow back. Those tampered seals would require a good thorough look through to identify why they didn’t work anymore despite not appearing outwardly broken. 

Now, for the chakra suppression. Another set of bloody flicks, creating an infinite loop that gathered his chakra instead of barricading it and- shit, fuck, shit, shit, motherfucking Icha Icha Violence with a side of kunai for knife-play, _that hurt_. 

Thin trails of smoke dissipated from his chakra points and he decided to push on forwards instead of lingering on the fading pain. 

Outside of his cell, the air was a degree or two colder from the scarcely improved corridor airflow. Without foreknowledge of the building’s layout, having been unconscious during his transfer from medical to his cell, he was at a severe disadvantage. Depending on the complexity of the layout, he could spend anywhere between minutes and hours traversing the twists and turns and T&I buildings were not often designed to the benefit of their captives. 

However, the object of his captors’ obsession had the potential to even the odds. Kakashi’s olfactory nerve was sensitive, along with every other trait he shared with his canine counterparts - upon leaving his cell, he was able to register the difference in airflow.

The solution wasn’t so simple as to follow the signs of the outside world, he could assuredly guess that he was in a multi-floored building and he was below ground level judging by the lack of windows and lack of _signs of the outside world_. However, if he could locate a ventilation system, he could meander through the building without drawing attention to himself. 

Slinking along the walls, tamping down on his chakra signature and doing his best to minimise his presence despite the lack of shadow cover and cover in general, he mentally acknowledged each door his fingers trailed over and the distances between each of them. 

More than once he paused and slipped behind a corner when footsteps bounced across the walls. In the eerie silence of the basement, all oncoming threats were loud as they made no effort to conceal themselves within their own territory. If it came down to it, Kakashi would incapacitate anyone who discovered him, irrespective of whether they were runners carting medical trolleys or shinobi on guard rotation. But they weren’t expecting an escapee and he would like to keep it that way. 

Security was oddly lax on the personnel, although Kakashi suspected that they hadn’t anticipated anyone bypassing their barrier seals without at least making some noise. In general, the seals he had encountered were unusually advanced for a village not known for the art… except, Uzushio had been known for it. Kirigakure had been the village to destroy Uzushio. 

Two puzzle pieces clicked into place on a jigsaw Kakashi had unknowingly unboxed. That was… something to think on later when his thoughts inevitably became more maudlin and he lingered on the past. Perhaps something red would catch his eye and he’d be reminded of hair, chillies, and compassion. Or maybe the sun would be high in the sky outside, the warm yellow was enough of a reminder on it’s...

Target acquired, a ventilation grid was embedded into the ceiling directly above his head. Lending itself to claustrophobia in a way that was likely both cost-effective and intimidating to prisoners, the corridor was not nearly as tall as it was long. Although, it didn’t feel that way. His estimations were telling him that the ceiling was just shy of one point nine metres yet it looked so much further away. Reaching above with his arms should have put him in contact with the sliced metal.

But his arms were spindly and his optimistically grabby hands were tiny. Six-year-old Kakashi hadn’t breached four foot yet. 

No matter, Kakashi had mastered tree walking at five and a touch of chakra to his toes and fingertips ensured that he could jump from wall to wall until he latched onto the slats, body swinging like a pendulum as he used miniature chakra shockwaves to bypass the screws bolting the grid in place. 

Hefting his insignificant body weight took more effort than it ought to, but he allowed himself the concession that more strength meant more muscle which in turn meant more weight and this body had barely graduated from its toddler years. When did children even stop being toddlers, anyway? Was it when they passed the academy entrance exam?

Kakashi’s ideas of age milestones were a little skewed. 

One thing no one ever said about travelling via ventilation shaft was that it wasn’t as quiet and stealthy as ninja heist novels liked to depict it. For the most part, the structure was made of concrete, simple tunnels carved into the spaces between floors and walls. However, when he entered the metal sections, the dynamics of the situation were flipped entirely. 

Each press against the surface, whether that be his butt and head touching the ceiling despite his small stature or the shuffling of his elbows and knees, was magnified by the warping of weak flexible metal. Progress was excruciatingly slow and he paid keen attention to nearby chakra signatures, always pausing in advance when someone entered the boundaries of his senses. 

The novels also missed out key details, like how there would be the occasional straight drop into the abyss or suddenly the ceiling would disappear above his head and he’d look up to see a vertical path. His suspension of disbelief would be challenged on new levels if he ever read _Akio Bushido and the Princess Behind Bars_ again. 

Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure if the novel had been written yet. Which was a shame if it hadn’t been, Kakashi liked his uncomplicated action romance books. Not nearly as much as he liked his Icha Icha - oh no. Oh no no no no. He _knew_ the first Icha Icha hadn’t been published yet. He had the serial number and publishing year of his first copy imprinted onto the back of his eyes alongside every single word in the novel. 

Oh Gods, why? Why should he be forced to live in a world such as this, six-years-old, trapped in the past, running from enemy territory, life unbelievably fucked in every way, knowledge of a doomed future resting on his shoulders, and _no goddamned Icha Icha_. 

He took a moment to despair, making use of his newly found headspace to look to the heavens, hands limp by his side. The effect was dulled somewhat by the clear view of the confines of the ventilation shaft and lack of a starry sky but he made a point to allow himself this nevertheless. 

Moment taken, he carried on, shimmying up the vertical pathway with the aid of chakra.

Once he reached the top and heaved himself onto the ledge of the next network of ventilation tunnels, he had to stop and catch his breath. Overloading the seals had taken a not so trivial amount of chakra although it wasn’t something he usually considered noting and he’d been using chakra liberally to secure himself to the walls, something which he didn’t even think about normally. But his body was a lot smaller than usual and so were his chakra reserves. And the researchers had been focused on his chakra at one point. And it had been restricted earlier. And he’d collapsed after taking out that recon group. It seemed very unlikely that he’d been allowed much of an opportunity to recuperate his stores between then and now. 

Fuck. Bad news, he was running low. 

Good news, airflow was markedly better. If he wasn’t above ground, he was close. 

Correct, he was in fact above ground. Following his nose, he was able to traverse the windings of the vent system until he found a grid that led directly out of the building. It was also half-submerged by dirt and grass, soil having tumbled through the slats and a single worm was wriggling two centimetres from his nose.

The smell of earth, something he usually took for granted, was a blessing to his senses after the saturated assault of cleaning solution he’d been subjected to ever since he woke up in foreign territory just two days (by his estimation, it was hard to keep track of the time when he was unable to account for how long his bouts of unconsciousness were) ago. 

Manually unscrewing the rusted screws with his sharp nails, avoiding his decommissioned pinky, and then with his teeth when he got frustrated with the rate of progress, he removed the grate and shook his head when soil tumbled onto the lower half of his face in response to the removal of its support. Begrudgingly, he was thankful for his stature as he squeezed through the gap, he would have had to find another route if he had his adult body. 

Coast clear, he took to the nearest bush and set about figuring out the logistics of the hard part of the mission. Kirigakure was dense with foliage, dark verdant hues submerging his surroundings and breaking only for the cream-and-brown buildings, also topped with more greenery, of which he could only see the tall and proud T&I building and what he assumed was the Hokage Tower in the distance. 

Konoha was not devoid of greenery, it was known for it. But the atmosphere in Kirigakure was cloying and humid, and more than one tree sported fruit that were uncommon and expensive finds at home yet they were just hanging there, unprotected. He didn’t like sweet things but the impulse to snap the stem of one of those colourful fruits and take a raw bite pinged in the back of his brain when his eyes laid sight on them. 

Distant chattering, the clings of kunai against kunai, the rush of water jutsu, and general hidden village life brought him back to the forefront of his predicament. Cover wasn’t something he had to worry about as much as he had inside T&I, foliage was thick as he had already established, and the mist the village was renowned for was just as good for hiding as the name implied. But vision obscurity was a two-way street and he didn’t have Obito’s sharingan anymore. 

Cataloguing what advantages he did have (small body, chakra dampening, stealth, sensory abilities, surprise) alongside his disadvantages (limited vision, unfamiliar terrain, enemy territory, out-numbered, low chakra levels, unknown enemy abilities and numbers, unknown escape route…) he set a course north and crawled along the ground, avoiding the cobbled main streets.

If he were at his full capacity and knew the extent of his abilities, he would have run. He was quick and no one was expecting him. A straight dash would eventually take him outside of the village’s perimeter and he knew which direction not to go since he could see the Hokage tower. 

The perimeter was made up of craggy mountains, very different from the man-made walls that housed Konoha on three out of four sides. Any shinobi whose intelligence outweighed their ego wouldn’t think to try and infiltrate Kirigakue by trekking through the mountain-scape and hoping for the best. There were routes in and out of the village, just like how easy it was for people to become lost in the living forest that surrounded Konoha, imbued with the will of the Shodai Hokage, yet those who belonged always found their way to and from home. 

Kakashi’s intelligence outweighed his ego, unless that was his ego flattering his intelligence? Either way, he understood that, under normal circumstances, it would not be wise to test the benevolence of the rocky Kiri borders. 

These were not normal circumstances and he’d rather put his life on the line than squander his opportunity to escape. Within two days he had been strapped down, interrogated, and scientifically examined. He didn’t know what would happen when the researchers did not find what they were looking for, when his interrogators continued to gather nothing useful from him, and their methods escalated. He didn’t plan on finding out. 

Children darted through the undergrowth two metres from him, playing a vicious game of tag with kunai. One chestnut-haired child was sporting a dribbling cut that split his right eyebrow and another in proto-shinobi mesh armour had a bloody nose. Neither seemed to be in distress, enjoying themselves as they threw semi-blunted kunai (not sharp enough to do any real damage in unskilled hands, but sharp enough to hurt and leave light scars) at each other. Giggling, they ran straight past his hiding spot and deeper into the trees. 

Exhale, inhale, he carried on. 

As shocking as a child killing apparently was to his interrogator, the children of Kiri were of a different breed from those in Konoha. Kakashi didn’t have the best point of reference as he’d been sent out into the field at a very young age but he’d never _played_ with weapons and never threw them at another child unless they were sparring and they were competent enough to dodge.

He didn’t crawl across the ground when grass transitioned into cream cobbled slabs, he paused at the edge of the tree line and gauged the distance between himself and the foliage at the opposite edge of the road. Small streams ran perpendicular to each other, like moats, following a locus around the road. Rivulets of water ran in between the cobbles themselves, languid in their pace. Around the bend some ways away, two teenagers chatted amiably, kicking up water with their sandals in a way that spoke of thoughtless chakra use, the water running along their soles, contrary to gravity, and spritzing the ground when it ran out of surface to cover. 

He waited until they were out of sight and leapt across the width of the damp cobbled path, throwing his hands ahead of him as he neared his landing. Using the tiniest spark of chakra, he skimmed over the blades of grass and near silently rolled into a crouched position, bypassing the great splattering squelch he would have made otherwise. 

His feet had long since been covered with mud, the soggy dirt slipping uncomfortably between his toes with each step he took. The ends of his white hospital gown were sodden as well, brown splattering up in lengths that nearly reached his collarbones in places. His hands, elbows, forearms, lower legs and knees had all suffered the same fate. 

Water country was nothing like Fire Country. On the surface, perhaps they seemed similar, what with the bountiful greenery and trees, but Fire Country was distinctly _dry_ for the most part and he couldn’t bear to think on how much worse his circumstances would get when it rained. 

Repeating his road crossing stunt four more times as he travelled further and the roads became more infrequent, he was confident he was going to make it to the mountains at the very least.

Until a fizz of foreign chakra spiked on the back of his gown. 

Pulling the fabric harsh enough to tear, his eyes lay sight on a simple beacon seal, released remotely, presumably by someone who realised he was missing. Beacon seals couldn’t be overridden, they were far too simple. All they did was release the chakra that had been stored inside, he could either empty the reserves in one giant flash-bang of energy or ditch it.

Pulling further, he continued his accidental tear until it reached the borders of the seal. With a kunai, he could swipe a circle around the edges, fold the axed fabric into a projectile and fling it far away from himself. Tearing fabric by hand lead to results that were difficult to control, he had to take it slowly, if he took one misstep-

Blinding blue light enveloped his vision, a physical admonishment of his spindly child fingers’ lack of motor control. 

Cold, damp squealchiness drew one giant line along the back of his body and he sank a centimetre in the ground before he had the presence of mind to scramble backwards, blind and needing to be anywhere but here. 

His mud slicked head and shoulders abruptly slammed into a pair of knees, and two hands gripped his flailing limbs with an all-encompassing strength. Impressions of silhouettes filtered into his vision, several tall figures encircling the spot where he had fallen, heads angled towards him. 

“-t me see that.” Voices came next and he was suddenly aware of the ringing in his ears and the distanced radio-like quality of everything else. He was passed to another pair of arms who tugged back the yoke of his gown. “Well, what would you know, he’s a foreign prisoner.”

“Oh, piss off, let me see.” He was pulled away by someone else, a brief tug of war playing out until the original speaker gave up with a huff. His kicking legs went unacknowledged as the woman dragged back the yoke and Kakashi got the impression there was something to see there. “How can you even tell? It’s just a bunch of numbers, I reckon this is just his second attempt to run from the hospital, my Yuko has been tagged with a tracking seal more than once for that.”

“No, he’s right,” said a third voice accompanied by a third yanking hand. Kakashi, somewhat nonsensically as his mind reeled from the shock, feared for the integrity of his gown’s neckline. Yep - there it was, the sound of a small rip. “You can tell by the last three digits, six for foreign and sixteen for prisoner. My sister works in T&I, you know, Katsuki?”

“‘Works,’ yeah, sure, if you can call running errands and grabbing tea for Suzuki real work,” the woman scoffed and tucked Kakashi closer, arms securing his upper body in place while she ignored his uncoordinated kicks. “Whoever’s on guard duty over there shouldn’t be too far now, but I say we take him back ourselves and bully a promotion out of Suzuki, or at least some kind of recommendation.”

“Hah, bully Suzuki? Funny. She’ll make you cry for even trying,” the one with the sister laughed without humour. “Let me do the talking and we’ll see about that recommendation, maybe.”

Bickering ensued as the three made their way in the opposite direction of the mountains. Slowly but surely, his vision was returning, and he was thankful for the misty low light and heavy shadows. The occasional blinks of moody sunlight flickering through the leaves hurt his eyes.

With the return of his eyesight, his rational thinking came back too. He forced his body limp and one of the men, the man who identified him by the tag on his gown, mocked his apparent lack of resolve. All the better for Kakashi, he worked best when underestimated to the point that his in-village persona hinged upon it. 

He gathered himself. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. 

In a single fluid motion, he kicked back between the woman’s legs, smacking his heel precisely where he knew it would hurt most, and threw his hands down in tandem with her body as she buckled forwards. Yanking with both the force of his entire body and their combined momentum, his hands clasped the underside of her knees and she fell backwards. Kicking off her thighs, he launched himself away from them before her companions had the chance to react. 

Pressing circumstances overruling his need to conserve chakra, he leapt from tree to tree, mentally plotting a new route while wind whipped his hair back and crinkled his distressed gown. Pursuers would be upon him soon, both those who knew who he was and why he was running as well as opportunity hunters who would see a runaway and pounce just like those three who had been drawn by the burst beacon. 

Throwing his senses out wide, he counted a number of tracking signatures in most directions, slowly hounding him in whether they intended to or not. There was a recognisable lack of coordination that differentiated the chasers from a synchronized squad but it didn’t particularly matter that they weren’t communicating if they were achieving the same goal by happenstance. 

He took a sharp turn as a water whip struck just ahead of him, the slight glint of tempered steel revealing the chakra wire encased inside. 

Rolling onto the ground, he launched himself back up to the branches not a moment too soon as the puddles he splashed through rose in a great wave to follow him, crashing down just half a metre from his landing branch. Shuriken flew by his cheek as he dipped to the side and then ducked as they flung back towards him, a thin line of water yo-yo'ing the sharp metal. 

Six chakra signatures were surging upon his location and the ambience of woodland creatures transformed into a cacophony of squawking birds as they flew away from the jets and waves of water crashing down onto each branch Kakashi jumped from, washing the mud from his toes and fingertips. 

Stuck on the defensive, he needed to flip the bets in his favour. A spectator sports for bored and spiteful Gods, he imagined disjointedly as he curled his spine around the flight path of three kunai.

But if there was one thing Kakashi knew about water, it was that it was an excellent conductor. 

Landing on a conjunction between five cobbled roads, his feet and bracing hands dashing water up high with the impact, he let all six shinobi burst from the trees and attack. As if in slow motion, he watched as the first two threw shuriken and kunai within milliseconds of each other. There wasn’t much he could do about them, but the rest acted exactly as he had been counting on them to. 

_Thank you, Sasuke,_ he thought, bitter sweet, _for bastardising my signature technique._

Two water waves on his left and right, the spray already tickling his skin. 

_Monkey._

A jet stream at eight o’clock, a whip forty-seven degrees to the left of it. 

_Ox._

Less than a second until impact. 

_Lightning Release: Chidori Current._

Brilliant white light lanced from his hands where they struck the ground, the rest of his body lifting with the force of the strike. Grinning, he ignored the slice of shuriken across his back and the point of a kunai embedding itself in his calf. Lightning took to the chakra infused water milliseconds from submerging him like fire to a straw house. 

Screams alighted around him as the shinobi lost control of the jutsu and water struck the kunai and shuriken throwers in the backlash, flinging all six backwards as their muscles contracted in a desperate bid to release them from the electricity’s hold. 

Thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud. 

Thud. 

__Rain fell as the jutsu dispersed and Kakashi’s airborne body followed suit, only the barest tips of his fingers had kept him tethered to the ground. Silence, except for the pitter-patter of water and trickling streams, reigned in the aftermath._ _

__Jarring his bones, his knees made contact with the cobble first and he slumped onto the ground, spent._ _

__Shit._ _

__He’d forgotten. Or perhaps he had known the whole time, backed into a corner and forced to resort to desperate measures. Had he not taken out the six of them, he would have been captured, not to mention heavily injured by the techniques they were using._ _

__Not that it mattered. Tendrils of darkness slinked at the edges of his vision and all he could do was reach a single arm forwards in a feeble attempt to drag himself along the cobble, only to lose consciousness._ _

__A pair of sandals and trailing ninja wire were the last things he saw before he went under._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little disclaimer about the joints part - I came up with that on a whim. I don't personally have the condition although I did look into it. There are varying degrees to being 'double-jointed' so I thought it was feasible, but I can easily remove it if anyone takes issue with it. 
> 
> By the way, if you want an idea of what I'm envisioning Kiri looks like, I'm building a mood board [here](https://drdiabolical.tumblr.com/tagged/kirigakure-mood-board). The parts seen in this chapter were mostly based on [that one screenshot from the anime](http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111109111939/naruto/images/7/71/Kirivillage.png). For setting, I'm taking the base aesthetics that canon presents as and when I please and then taking them in whatever direction I vibe with. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/drdiabolical)


	3. Static

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi is back and his chances for escape are becoming much slimmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the tags is becoming very relevant in its introduction here.

“... you implying that this _pre-academy child_ incapacitated six adult shinobi, three of which specifically assigned to detain escapees, _without_ the use of a kekkei genkai?”

“Ah, post-academy, um, he’s six years old.”

“Six? That’s not post-academy age.”

“Well, um, I’m not sure how the, ah, Leaf, do things, but he is a chuunin according to both our intel and the, um, prisoner’s confession.”

Silence. 

“Tell me again that he has no kekkei genkai.”

“... he has no kekkei genkai.”

WHACK. 

Kakashi’s eyes snapped open briefly, long enough to account for the bare basics of his surroundings before he returned to pseudo-sleep. Two figures, one cowering in front of the other. Four walls, close, nigh claustrophobic, probably would have been unsettling if he was both his full size and had a proximity derived fear. 

His sense of touch told him he wasn’t quite bound but layered with strong yet papery restraints. Heavier bindings encased his ankles and wrists. Subtle flexing of his limbs alerted him to a set of chains attached to each, almost taut judging by the restriction and lack of jangling. His gown had been replaced, a new one set over the bindings that wound across his body. 

He couldn’t feel his chakra. At all. 

Logically, he knew it must be there since he was alive, but his lungs didn’t care much for the intricacies of facts and logic and urged him to breath sharper, faster. He didn’t. He maintained his even breaths by sheer force of will. 

“I should take you directly to Suzuki myself, those were my shinobi he fried, I will not have anyone telling me some six-year-old nobody of unremarkable lineage took out shinobi that I trained,” the strong figure said, a man with a mid-timbre voice growing darker with each word. “Go get Tooru, this was his problem from the very beginning.”

“R-right, yes sir!” The cowering girl scrambled, her hospital slips audibly scuffing the ground in her hurry to leave.

Purposefully loud, the man’s sandals slapped against the ground thrice as he covered the short distance between himself and Kakashi’s prone form. Intimidation of the likes the man used against the girl wouldn’t work on Kakashi, ANBU were trained to resist interrogation (and, most importantly, kill themselves if the training failed them). 

Nothing useful had come from his single session with the man he had first woken up to, potentially named Tooru considering the context of the overheard conversation, partly due to his experience and partly because he had no information they would believe. Kirigakure was not known for their mind techniques like Konoha and their Yamanaka were, for that he was thankful.

He was not thankful for much else. 

“Time to wake up.” A solid kick to his ribs had him spluttering on reflex, unable to stop himself from ejecting the contents of his lungs. Helpless in his bindings, he watched as the man lifted him by his gown’s neckline to the extent the chains would allow. Dark spikey hair framed a cruel face unmarked by scars yet Kakashi instinctively knew he wasn’t bare from lack of exposure to combat. The man was dangerous, and he knew it. 

Kakashi had never liked those types, shinobi who were far from mediocre but had little to their name other than their rank and strutted the fact and threw it around just to feel the satisfaction of holding power over others. That, and the allure of their stories that drew in fanciful civilian ladies. Nevermind there were a whole slew of highly specialised and trained ninja who could take them out in the blink of an eye, they didn’t care. They convinced themselves of a reality in which those better than them didn’t exist. 

Right now, Kakashi’s personal distaste didn’t matter. Right now, a genin with only a basic grasp of a single set of academy kata and three kunai to hand could hold the same power over him. The theatrics only served to rub salt in the wound. 

“I don’t care what the researchers say,” the man leant in close, “there’s not a chance in hell,” breath fanning across his face, salt, fish, and mango, “you managed to take out my shinobi,” noses centimetres apart, “without some kind of bloodline- _FUCK!_ ”

Iron slathered his tongue, thick and beginning to gag him but Kakashi sank his teeth in further, crunching through cartilage and bone. Vice-like, his jaw locked while the shinobi screamed, hands desperately pushing against his shoulder and exacerbating the damage. 

Amidst the rush of blood and yelling, he almost missed the following thud and connected the abstract sound to the opening of a door after the fact when a second pair of hands got involved in the restraining. Slipping behind his neck, fingers calm but deliberate in their search, a direct contrast to the jostling hands on his chest and shoulders, until they found what they were searching for and sparked a little chakra. 

Like a flipped switch, Kakashi went limp. His mind sent signals to his limbs but they were deaf to the messages. His jaw, locked as it was, had to be pried from the man’s face, baby fangs slipping out of flesh and bone with sick squelching pops. He caught a glimpse of a bloodied face, _say bye, bye to the ladies_ , before his head hung with no support. 

“He- he- what the fuck kind of- he bit me like a fucking, a fucking, _dog_ ,” disjointed footsteps took the man’s voice further away from Kakashi.

“Jiro, take Hikaru to medical,” the familiar voice of Tooru belonged to the pair of hands that had paralysed Kakashi.

“Yessir,” Jiro said. Kakashi hadn’t noticed the fourth member in the room, disorientated by the chaos. Although it was of little consequence, Jiro left and took the whimpering Hikaru with him and, once again, Kakashi was left with a single interrogator. A semi-competent one, this time. 

Tooru did not engage with him. He chose to potter about the small room, arranging the only chair according to some inane personal preference, from what Kakashi could hear. His view of a very specific patch of ground below wasn’t lucrative in the intel department. 

Blood splattered the concrete now, a puddle slowly growing with each rhythmic droplet from Kakashi’s face, dribbling from his slack mouth. Angled oddly by his restraints, he couldn’t see his gown but he could feel how the front of it was soaked.

The last time Kakashi had seen this man, he had been barely concealing anger. What had happened since then?

Tooru huffed, apparently done with his arrangements, and his feet came into view. If he held any qualms about the blood he was standing in, Kakashi wouldn’t be able to tell from his feet, nor his hands as they released the paralysis seal with the same calm temperament he expressed when detaching Kakashi’s teeth from another man’s face. 

A small spike of chakra and Kakashi had control of his limbs again. Just to be contrary, he snapped at Tooru’s retreating hands, missing, as he had expected, but the sentiment was clear. 

Generally, Kakashi didn’t bite people. The principle stemmed from two main ideas; one, it wasn’t an effective combat strategy, he didn’t want his throat and face anywhere within an opponent’s range of attack, and, two, he usually wore a mask.

However, Kakashi was a ninja of adaptability and opportunity. When the normal methods of combat were taken away, the abnormal stepped into place. 

Tooru tutted, “bad boy.” 

Mobility regained, Kakashi looked up to match his eyes and found Tooru’s expression to be mildly chastising as if he hadn’t just sent one of his colleagues to medical. Bad boy, Kakashi, good boys don’t permanently disfigure people. Hah. What the hell. 

He winced as Tooru sat down on the chair and it screeched slightly against the floor. Crossing his arms, he looked at Kakashi with the air of an authority figure more akin to a disapproving teacher than a hard-boiled interrogator. 

“My neighbour has three dogs and a puppy,” Tooru said conversationally, “I’ll have to ask her what she does when her puppy tantrums.”

Pointedly, Kakashi did not say _I’m not a dog_ because he was an ANBU trained shinobi who knew how to conduct himself professionally during an interrogation. Weak attempts at dehumanisation and whatever other bizarre tactics this man employed wouldn’t get through to him. 

Last time, he had the advantage of Kakashi’s tumultuous mental state. Now, Kakashi had adjusted to his situation. He may not have all of the facts, he may still be holding out on confirming anything until he got a hold of evidence, but he knew the layout of his circumstances and the information pertinent to his current reality. Anything that came after escape, came after. 

“I did a little research of my own, although we don’t have much intelligence on the Hatake clan. Information on the White Fang? Sure, what village doesn’t? But the clan itself? Fire Country folk tales, mostly. Hearsay. A wild clan with ties to the Inuzuka. Not necessarily friendly ties, but ties. A common ancestor, maybe. I’d have to ask around country inns if I wanted to know more, which I’m not going to do,” Tooru shrugged as if to say ‘what can you do?’ 

There was a pause inviting Kakashi to speak, an invitation he declined. It grated on him to admit it but he probably knew as much as Tooru did about his own clan. Dad died when Kakashi was eight and he’d avoided the empty clan manor since. Another tick on the list of things he’d lost along with his dad on that terrible night. 

A terrible night he may or may not have prevented. 

“What I do know is what the researchers have come up with. You haven’t got a kekkei genkai.” He leant forward, elbow on his knee, chin in his palm. “And that’s a problem.

“I’m going to have a very hard time justifying an overruling of your execution order to my boss and the Mizukage. You’ve killed our shinobi, gravely injured more, mauled the face of your interim supervisor, and proven yourself to be a security risk - nevermind that I’ve ensured you won't escape again, it hasn’t been proven that you can’t, even if I know it’s impossible. If you had a kekkei genkai, the plan I have devised and will propose would be approved much more easily. So we’re going to have to work with what we do have.”

Easily avoiding the range of Kakashi’s mouth, Tooru ruffled his hair so it fell across his eyes. Without the means to use his hands, Kakashi was forced to shake his head in hopes of getting the silver strands to fall back into place. Multiple times. His hair never cooperated with him. 

“I’ll be back soon,” Tooru waved and opened the door, “somebody will come by with food in good time and a couple of somebodys will show you the bathroom.”

The door closed and Tooru left.

Testing the strength of his restraints, Kakashi had to admit he didn’t know how to free himself. He was covered in seals, barrier seals, for the most part, he guessed as well as the one that restricted his movement and the complete chakra suppression. Without his chakra, he couldn’t identify the seals, let alone override them. 

He was stuck unless he came up with more options.

* * *

They were too prepared. 

No less than four shinobi arrived when they took him out of the cell to relieve himself. The seals stayed on, as did the shackles, they just disconnected them from where they were attached to the wall. His short carry-walk had allowed him to see the seals on the outside as well, more complicated than before. Not that he wouldn’t be able to get around them, but he couldn’t without his chakra and he couldn’t access his chakra if he couldn’t investigate the seals on his body with his hands. From there he could substitute blood for ink and make rudimentary alterations and hope for the best, but it was something at the very least.

Tooru knew what he was doing. He was also a liar.

He wasn’t back soon. By the count of his internal clock, a whole day had passed before he returned. ‘Soon’ varied in definition, but the implication had been ‘same day’ in Kakashi’s mind in that particular context. If he wasn’t mistaken, Tooru was on a time limit, Kakashi’s continued life balanced on Tooru’s ability to sway the opinions of both Suzuki, who he presumed was the head of T&I, and the Mizukage. The Bloody Mist’s Mizukage, not Terumi Mei. The one under the influence of Madara and subsequently Tobi in the future. 

Although, would Tobi ever come into fruition? Without Kakashi, team Minato’s roster will change, or it would if Kakashi didn’t get the hell out of Kirigakure before he turned nine years old. Which he would.

“You’ll be glad to know I talked to my neighbour,” Tooru said as he closed the door behind him, clicking shut with a decisive thud. “I told her I got a new puppy,” in one hand he had a spray bottle and the other he couldn't see as he was holding it faux casually behind his back. “I said it was misbehaving, nearly bit my friend’s nose clean off,” he sat down on the lone chair, dragging it forwards a few inches with his feet. “She didn’t believe me, of course, but the only lie was that the man had been my friend.”

Kakashi continued to play mute, face blank, and he thought longingly of his mask. He had adjusted to the disappearance of its physical presence but there was a comfort to be had in the knowledge that even if his mouth twitched or his jaw tightened, it would have been hidden. 

“You see, we have a small problem. If you’re going to be an asset to the village, I can’t keep you tied up like this. I bet it hurts, doesn’t it? I bet your muscles are really aching. You’re a skilled ninja despite your age and the longer you are out of action, the more useless you will become. Your muscles will atrophy and you’ll continue to drain our resources. But if I just let you loose, you’ll escape, or at least try to, anyway, and I’ll have no hope in rescinding that execution order. Do you see what I’m getting at here, buddy?”

Yes, it was to Kakashi’s benefit if he cooperated. That didn’t mean he had to lie down and roll over, though. He didn’t respond. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I am using a lot of big words and you’re only small,” he chuckled and for a dreadful moment, Kakashi thought he was going to ruffle his hair again. Thankfully, he didn’t, he looked down at him with a condescending smile that somehow communicated the same message as a hair ruffle would have. “Let’s see, if you don’t be a good boy and do as you’re told, you will die. That better?”

Reluctantly, he nodded. 

Underestimation was not something Kakashi was able to utilise outside of the village unless in disguise. He was too well known. He lacked that notoriety now but he’d already displayed his ability to kill shinobi twice his size. Tooru should not be underestimating him. 

Kakashi wasn’t completely convinced he was, but he would play into the role of a child if it was something he could convince him of. Children were vulnerable in more ways than one. Even if an actual child was as deadly as Kakashi, their minds and world views were far from developed. Tooru probably imagined he could take advantage of that. He was wrong. But he didn’t have to know he was wrong. 

“Good boy,” and there was the hair ruffle. Utilising his new strategy, he allowed himself to irritatedly shake his head and snapped at out of reach hands when Tooru brushed it aside for him. “Bad boy,” he admonished, wagging a finger in the general direction of his face. 

Cold forced his eyes shut and he reared his head back, Tooru had sprayed him. 

What did he expect to achieve with that? It was just water to the face, harsh water, certainly unpleasant, but it was easily endured.

“My neighbour gave me this nice little doggy collar for you, wasn’t that nice of her?” He revealed his hidden hand which did, dishearteningly, hold a dog collar. Unnecessarily clunky, but unmistakably something that wouldn’t be too remiss around a canine’s throat. 

Personally, Kakashi didn’t use dog collars for his ninken, there wasn’t any real point to it. They were loyal, knew how to govern themselves and had cognizance on par with humans. He didn’t need something to attach a lead nor did he need further identification when his capes and forehead protectors did the job just as well, if not better. 

Kakashi almost got his teeth around Tooru’s thumb for a well-deserved crunch when he fixed the collar around his neck, almost. What he got in return was another spritz. Hardly a deterrent. 

The collar was heavy and nearly clung to his skin with how tight it was, he struggled to tame the urge to swallow around it. 

“Okay, I’m going to untie you now, be a good boy and do as I say, okay?” Tooru said and Kakashi nearly short-circuited. Was the man insane? Certifiably, he gathered that much already, but this was something else. 

Yet the chains went slack and the form-fitting shackles on his wrists and ankles uncurled. This wasn’t right. Captors were not supposed to do this. Not without any leverage. Sure, if Kakashi cooperated, he’d avoid state-sanctioned murder, but he’d avoid that all the same if he escaped _and_ he’d be out of their clutches.

He didn’t like this. Unknowns were bad, ANBU had taught him that lesson, thoroughly. Faulty information and unexpected changes in high-pressure situations often meant unnecessary deaths and, when the circumstances were particularly dire, failed missions. That wasn’t to say everything went according to plan on a good day. There was such a thing as a plan going _too_ well, too good to be true. Assuming that Tooru thought Kakashi would cooperate easy as anything reeked of false promise. 

“This way,” Tooru _turned his back on him_ and headed for the door, beckoning with his hand, “we’re going for a walk.”

Cautiously, Kakashi stood and took his first wobbly step forwards. Muscles protesting a day of almost complete inaction, but he powered forward, doing his best to effect that he was in his physical prime. Now he was behind Tooru, the disparity in height was all the more obvious. He reached Tooru’s hip. 

Pausing at the threshold of the room, he analysed Tooru for anything outside of what he mentally catalogued as ordinary. He couldn’t find anything. It appeared as though Tooru genuinely was going to allow Kakashi to follow him unaided.

“Come along now, I don’t want to have to repeat myself,” he waved his spray bottle menacingly, as though it held any power of him. 

Dubious, Kakashi followed, walking slower than he had to under the pretence of disused muscles. It wasn’t an entirely false pretence, his limbs were screaming at him but Kakashi had long since learned to ignore the cries of his body, almost to the point of detriment at times. Tooru did not comment if he noticed, adjusting his pace so that he didn’t lose Kakashi around any corners. 

He didn’t like this at all. 

Trailing a limp hand along the all, he counted the doors they walked past. Tooru didn’t turn to look at him but Kakashi maintained a weak facade all the while, just in case, and pretended it really was deception. Pretended his jaw didn’t ache from the attack, pretended his body didn’t creak like a rusted machine, pretended his numbness to chakra wasn’t a gaping vulnerability. 

… Four… Five… Left turn… One… Two…

He knew this place. One more turn and he’d see the vent, hopefully still busted- yes, there it was! Seven more paces and he could jump. Without chakra, but he could do it given the momentum.

Pausing, he tested his boundaries. Tooru continued walking onwards, unawares. Shifting his weight and bending one leg behind, he drew back and ran. 

Bare feet pounding with each leaping step, he bound forward until he was a metre from the open vent, both feet left the ground, his arms reached heavenward, he-

“Ngh-“ His body seized, hands frozen mere centimetres from grasping the slats. His bones vibrated, muscles locked tight. There was a loss between jumping and finding himself on the floor, his coccyx a beacon of impact. The lights were out, his vision tunnelling. Confused, he lay on the ground unmoving.

A face blotted out the spotlight of his focus, a sick grin and unknowns eyes staring down at him. “Up,” he understood the word a couple of seconds after it left the grinning mouth and lost his sight again as he was tugged upright by the collar. 

Sucking air through his teeth, his scrabbled at the collar as it lit up his neck in a band of pain, sensitive skin set on fire. His toes barely brush the ground and he stilled to avoid aggravating the pain further.

His efforts were for nought, Tooru shook him and moisture sprang into Kakashi’s eyes and static took hold of him. 

“... boy, you will be shocked, be a good boy, and you won’t get shocked, understood?” Tooru’s voice faded in, from inaudible to incredibly loud by his ear despite having the timbre of a whisper. 

When he didn’t immediately respond, he was shaken again until he jerkily nodded over and over again. Placed back onto shaky legs, Tooru allowed him to gather his bearings and shake out the aftershock. The pain of it was gone soon enough, but the sudden _invasive_ feeling of it coursing through his body didn’t leave and his muscles ached. 

At least now he knew Tooru’s angle. 

As someone who had a lightning affinity, he’d assumed he’d had some kind of resistance, or maybe a way of channelling it even as foreign energy. But the electricity was so quick in its arrival, short-circuiting him in less than a second. There was nothing he could do but perhaps grow used to it. He almost shivered at the thought.

“Come along now, we don’t want to keep the medic-nin waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from the break I mentioned on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/drdiabolical). I hope you enjoyed this.

**Author's Note:**

> As always let me know if I need more tags. And also know that more tags are likely to come. I can promise that it is incredibly unlikely that any of the other official archive content warnings will be used aside from the Graphic Violence tag though and I will always warn you in the notes beforehand if there are any changes. 
> 
> Unlike my Dark!Minato series, this isn't meticulously planned out. I have ideas for some events and a concept for where I want this to go but it is very open-ended and could change at any time. I just wrote the prologue in response to the "Waking Up Restrained" whumptober prompt and ran with it. 
> 
> My Fic Centric Tumblr is [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/drdiabolical) where I post things like [this mood board](https://drdiabolical.tumblr.com/tagged/kirigakure) I'm slowly building for kirigakure and [this research piece into fuinjutsu](https://drdiabolical.tumblr.com/post/631506633256779776/reddit-research-fuinjutsu) because I h/c that Kiri stole a lot of fuinjutsu from Uzushio, so there's that if you're interested in updates about my fics and content like that.


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